


In the Woods Somewhere

by PeachBriseadh



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Deja Vu, Fear, Fever, Hand Jobs, In The Woods Somewhere, M/M, Mercy Killing, Multiple Deaths, Sickness, Wilderness, lots of fever, mind altering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachBriseadh/pseuds/PeachBriseadh
Summary: You find him there on the ground like you always have.He finds you alone and afraid like he always does.You die for one another, again and again.Like you always do.Like you always will.





	In the Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Suz and Belvie for discussing my '3am insomnia fic' with me and cheering me on

There’s nothing to it once you’ve started. 

Walking, that is. Wondering. It’s one step after the next, your muscles pulling you forward as fast as reasonably applicable with the weight of your traveler's pack and the aimless, feather-light thoughts rolling about in your noggin, fleeting though they are. Over the years, you’ve learned to move more and think less, action over words, letting your mind go physical, feeling the Earth beneath your feet or the wind against your face as it beckons you ever forward to unknown shores. There is always something more, something new in the vast beyond that curves over the horizon.

You will never reach compass, and that is as much an impenetrable fact as it is a genuine comfort.

Besides, you're far too busy existing in this new adventure to be anywhere else, too busy becoming the landscape in the most intimate of ways. You’ve found  yourself deep in an uncharted wilderness, living by example. You brim and breathe with the flora and fauna, seeking nutrients from the hinterland around you as they do. There is life and discovery incorporate, every inch of this unfurling green you travel feeds that deep rooted hunger for adventure that craves eternal in your gut. Your chest rises and falls, heaving in the air around you and tasting it’s whispering growth, the sweet, husky tinge of rotting leaves and wet soil damp on the back of your tongue. 

This is being alive. This is living.

This new land is astonishing in a way you have not experienced, heavily seeded with creatures you could never imagine, but accept on sight. They crawl, and fly, and slither, and bloody well  _ float  _ around you. They are perfectly acclimated to their world, and you envy and admire their simple, complicated, endless cycles of birth and death. Some of the smaller varieties approach your camps, and you coo and chitter to them, feeding them scraps and treats from your pack to coax them into sticking around for your little chats. There is a sharp intelligence in their eyes you’ve never seen before, and you find yourself enamored with the silent conversations they offer. 

The flora is lush and swollen with health. Plants you recognize on sight are larger, more gargantuan versions of the lesser originals. Or, perhaps, the ones you are familiar with are the stunted copies. This wood is ageless, it’s flora premier. You wouldn’t be surprised if life itself crawled shy and wanting from the depths of these massive roots and streams of crystalline perfection. It is untouched and untampered.

For days you wonder these rich woods. For weeks, it is amazing. 

It is massive. Unending. 

_ Unyielding _ . 

Your paths do not linger long after they are made, bouncing out of their pressed shapes within the hour like tightly wound springs. Unnervingly, marking the trees is rendered an act of futility as well, since the bark seems to  _ scab over _ by morning. You decide not to think on that little detail too long, and manage to press onward by following deer paths hidden amongst the thicker briars, long worn and trusted. They are not easily supervened.

The deer move about like delicate specters, agile masters of their land. 

And, admittedly, quite cheeky.

You are convinced that a barrel chested hart the color of fresh fallen snow led you in circles for three hours out of spite. His tracks vanished without a single trace, apparently growing tired of his little hide and seek game at your expense. One lickity split flash of ivory, and he vanished into the still morning like a blink of sunlight. 

Marking that encounter, the creatures have begun to  _ really _ take notice of you. They do not engage, but you feel their intelligent eyes studying and tracking you, some more so than others. They make strange, haunting noises through the days and nights alike, filling your dreams with howls and keens of unknown origins. 

Your dreams, and your nightmares. 

You're getting tired. 

You walk through the night and day alike, avoiding sleep until it is an incessant, clawing thing, mercilessly tearing at your heavy lids and sore muscles. The weight of your pack minifies as the days and nights pass by in bulk. You are both relieved and terrified by the reprieve.

Food becomes scarce after four weeks in this place. What were once attainable necessities have now become thin and far-between. Deer and squirrel alike seem to possess an extraordinary aptitude for keeping unnoticed, as if they are fully aware of your current lack of physical caliber. 

One quiet evening, as you reach your capacity for fatigue and slow to search for nourishment and a soft spot to camp, a new feeling stirs at the back of your throat and deep in the muscles of your chest.

A nervous, dangerous heat that squirms beneath your skin and needles your lungs.

Illness.

Now, reaching five long weeks, your provisions have been all but depleted and the throng of game has ebbed en masse, leaving you bloody starved and weak in the wake of a depressive, lonesome drought. 

Lonesome, yes. That is what you are. 

The creatures, so numerous at the start, have all but vanished. Cries and howls sneak through the heavy silence from time to time, and you find yourself holding your breath at the loud crash of your own footfalls, careful not to shatter the brittle calm. Without the cacophony of animals, the woods become a honed static, thrumming against your eardrums. Even the bugs have turned their music away.

It is, in a word, unnerving.

A fever has struck you a blindsided hit, crippling your already waning strength. Sleep comes easily, but the fever agitates your grey matter, churning your dreams in wicked ways, twisting them into hellish nightmares of groaning, odious monsters beyond the tree lines. 

You find solace tucked into the thick, forgiving moss blanketing the base of a frankly massive black oak. The bark that covers the substantial roots breaking ground around you is a dusty, coal black with square patches of lighter browns along the gentle slopes. Wide, black as pitch scars riddle it's skin warm surface, giving off an impression of hot ink pulsing beneath like blood under a throbbing scab. 

You are reminded then how they heal overnight, and shiver under the weight of proof. 

The leaves overhead are, both strangely and of reason, a brilliant golden orange, reminiscent of ripe pumpkins from far away lands. You sweat and gasp and clutch at your now empty pack, the only link to the you that came here 5 weeks ago seeking adventure and learning, only to be broken down by a soft faced wildwood. 

Delirious, you let the worry for food and shelter slip away over the precipice of fever and exhaustion, watching as your instincts to survive crash along the rocky cliffs of a peaceful death. Shucks howdy.

There is a certain amount of poetry to it, you think, coming to this forgotten place to find adventure and, though reluctantly, being claimed by it. Pulled into its endless cycle permanently. Manic laughter drags up from cracked, dry lips and into the cool night air. Days here are warm and heady with life, while nights are admittedly cold under a heavy canopy, moonlight dripping through the parted leaves to cling onto the world below like glinting jewels. Bathed in a delicate spray of the stuff, you doze and cry. Tears fall, but nobody is around to see them, so you let your embarrassment burn away.

Nobody is around to see you. To find you. The wood teams with sounds and calls and the sweet echo of birdsong. It is unendingly cruel of them, keeping far off and silent until your last moments. They know. They had always known.

They sing you to sleep with sweet, mollifying lullabies. Urge you to welcome your death.

The beauty never ceases. It is a wholly scenic place. Inviting, until it chooses otherwise. Hungry to claim those that are easily mislead by beauty. Easy to make lost.

_ You _ are lost, and will  _ die _ lost. 

You cry, soundless, and sleep.

  
  


===

  
  
  


You do not wake peacefully, but you do wake.

What you thought was the soft caress of death was anything but. The creature in your chest is a wrathful, punishing sickness. Pestilence itself lays you low with an aching, feverish nausea. Your clammy skin is subject to brutal waves of sweltering heat that makes your mind chaotic with noise and warped fear. Between long bouts of restless nightmares, you grasp at lucidity. 

A bed. Soft, too warm sheets and blankets of animal hide. You savor small details between fits like a man starving, tally them to anchor yourself through the storm. Another blanket, this one of light, airy cotton. The press of a wet cloth to your forehead, your neck and shoulders. You cry out in sleep, horrific visions of being eaten alive by gnashing claws and glaring spitfire eyes. Far worse are those smokey, false memories of family and friends you will never see again as they easily forget your role in their lives, turning away and vanishing you from their thoughts. Their hearts.

Forgotten. 

Whimpers and screams pellet the silence that fills your skull like steel wool, and you are loath to know they are all torn from your own ravaged throat. 

An eternity goes by before clarity graces you, peeling away the burning transgressions of fever with soft, careful fingers. For once, you come into consciousness slowly, like wading out of warm waters after swimming for hours, blinking heavily and feeling like an overcooked noodle. The first thing you see is a human profile. 

Hungry for reality, you fiercely squint, fighting for focus only to realize your glasses have been removed and a baseline headache throbs sleepily behind your eyes with the hastey exertion. Horsefeathers, you may as well be blind. Pain hums through every fiber of you while your fear form nearly catching your death sleeps somewhere under the covers of an exhausted mind, stirring mildly.

Blinking, brows pinched, you examine your resident blurry gargoyle.

The blurry human profile sits atop a long, pale neck. Colors blur, rubbing out any finer details, but you can make out a soft tan shirt under what might be a housecoat or jacket of a rusty, dark brown. The blur of color is crowned in the strangest strawberry gold you’ve ever seen, and you struggle to see it more clearly, drawn to the sweet hue. Grunting softly against the ache of a bone deep sickness, you try to sit up. The blur turns towards you lightning quick, dropping what is presumably a book somewhere near your feet, and closes in. 

As he, because that is very clearly what he is now, comes closer, he gains definition. He's so speedy that you don't even have the chance to tense up or cringe at his advance.

“Don’t.” He orders, and it’s like a balm. Holy. The first voice in weeks, maybe  _ years _ , and it’s low and mournful and  _ heavenly _ . Your eyes are frantic as you look all over his lovely face. Freckles, sharp eyebrows, pink pretty lips, and  _ eyes _ . Eyes like amber, ribbed with gold. There is a strangeness to them however, that you do not recognize right off the bat. A familiar flavor, forgotten after years of famine. His pupils are waxed over, deep brown instead of black. Reflective.

He watches you study him. Concern mars his lovely features, curves the edges of his mouth into a delightful frown. 

He is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

“Uh. Thanks, but I’m gonna chalk that remark up to the three day long nightmare feverbinge.” 

Oh. 

You appear to be speaking out loud. 

Ahem. 

You hadn’t even noticed your mouth was open, and you slam it shut hard enough to hear your teeth click together. You both wince at the sharp sound. A rush of embarrassment heats your already warm cheeks and you go dizzy with it, lifting a clammy hand to your forehead. What a fool you are. Sweat covers your fingers and palm as tremors run insistent through the bones of your entire arm. You feel so unsettlingly  _ weak _ , quivering and sickly on this stranger's bed. Your air comes and goes in deep, heaving breaths as you ready your body for wakefulness. He watches you with a sombre expression, a slight crease between his brows. Oh, well now, you don’t care for that one lick.

Your fingers veritably quake as you reach up to gently try amd press away that grievous mark. Your host jerks back like you’ve already struck him, snatching your hand out of the air by the palm and gently putting it back down onto the bed. “Hands to yourself,” he scolds.

He pulls his hand off yours as if your skin is toxic to him. Though, you wager, it may very well be at present. Blinking, you look around the blurry room for only a minute before you decide he’s much more interesting. 

“Where..” you croak. Oh, that’s unattractive. You clear your throat and stretch your neck, pressing into the pillow underneath your aching head. He watches you carefully as you creak and moan, but makes no more moves to stop you. His eyes remind you of the animals form the woods, reticent and attentive. 

“I found you,” he says, avoiding your eyes where you had been unwittingly staring at him. His voice is rich, deep, and unfairly steady. “I had assumed you were dead, but by some stroke of luck,” he frowns and you frown with him. “You weren’t.” 

Well, he doesn't have to act all broken up about it! You must be making an awful face, because he blinks twice and straightens up, hands worrying at the blankets. “Wait. That came out mad depths of wrong.” He gets up and walks over to a shelf. His smooth tone breaks a little, honest apology oozing through the narrow cracks of his mask.

A number of items sit peacefully upon the shelf he approaches, all too wobbly and unfocused for you to make hide nor hair of from a distance. He picks up what seems to be a length of cloth and ties it around his head, shielding his eyes. He returns to your bedside, a little more relaxed.

“I don’t mean to sound like I was looking forward to finding a dead guy out there, man- or really anyone, honestly.” He folds his hands on the bed, long fingers interlocking like a cabins build, and rubs his thumbs together. “I mean, you lived, obviously that’s a positive, but that fever damn near killed you despite the fact. I didn’t expect you to survive the first night.” It’s a little unsettling, the absence of his eyes, his detached tone, and the way he mentions ‘finding a dead guy’ and ‘didn’t expect you to live’ with the same inflection.

The first night?

How many days and nights have you been here, washed in the wicked throws of ill delirium? Lifting both leaden arms simultaneously is laborious work, but you manage, and run your fingers through your tacky hair. With your arms held aloft like this, the truth of his words becomes ungodly apparent. 

You smell like you've done nothing but sweat since birth. He stripped you of your heavy coat and flannel, generously, leaving you bare chested against his poor sodden sheets. Ripe BO drifts around you in what you’re sure is a pretty unpleasant waft. The man makes no comment, and well, it’s too late to be ashamed now. You groan into the face of what is undoubtedly going to be a rather lengthy recovery. You feel the strain pulling from your shoulders to your hips and grimace at the way the movement seems to awaken every other pain as well, every muscle from chin to heel lighting up with staticy aches. 

“I’m smelling a tad pungent.” You lament, dropping your arms to your sides, thoroughly aggrieved. Your hero blows a puff of air out of his nose and stands up, but does not look at you, from what you can tell anywho. Nervous fellow.

“You are. I have a tub that you’re welcome to use, once you’re feeling up to it.” The cheeky thing tilts his chin away from you, over his shoulder somewhere and too far for your eyes to follow. It’s no to much of a loss, however, since nothing makes much sense to your hindered eyesight anyways. 

“Did you perhaps find my glasses along with my almost-corpse?” You halfway slur, fending off a bell deep yawn. There’s the slightest twitch to one corner of his mouth, but he’s up and turning away before you can really take in the finer details, leaving your small field of clear vision. 

Without a sound, he walks over to the same shelf he retrieved his blindfold from and comes back. He holds out your dark folded frames in an enviably steady hand. In your rush to put them on you nearly put out your own eye, but the man at your side reaches out and steadies you, one of his hands on either of yours. It’s rather intimate, after being away from people for so long, and you are simultaneously thankful and starved for the contact. When they’re settled, he darts away just like before. A shame, that. 

All at once clarity washes over your vision, the world around you starting to make ocular sense again, and you find yourself in a cozy cabin type affair. Everything is wood, whether carved or found. The room is like being placed squarely inside the surreal wet dream of an obsessive lumberjack. Nothing but wood and trees. Speaking of which, there is one growing through the floor and up past the ceiling square in the center of this room. Neat, you think, as you note the clean way the floorboards are cut to allow it room to further it's growth. Bright green moss clings to the floor, carpeting nearly a two foot radius around the slim trunk. This tree lacks the massive roots of its brethren, and is covered in an almost milky white smoothness. A birch, mayhaps. 

So this is his bedroom, you gather. A dark wooden dresser sits across from you, six even drawers with simple brass knobs just past the tree, pressed to the wall. Fur blankets hang from a rack at the foot of the bed, for easy accommodation. Above your line of sight are a few stacked shelves, including the one he was keeping your glasses and his eye wear on with the rest of his baubles. Next to the shelves is what looks like a large piece of ancient, broken glass flat to the wall, jagged at the corners, but held suspended and balanced between carved wooden knots. From the looks of it, you wouldn’t be able to see much of a reflection in it’s wobbly, stained depths. 

There is one window to your left, blocked by a set of heavy hide sheets, a soft sliver of moonlight peeking between the dark skin. Numerous candles light the room in a soft golden glow that eases your throbbing headache somewhat. 

When you look back to the man at your side, he looks away quickly, caught staring. You on the other hand, stare back unhindered, too tired to really care, and take in his clear, handsome features. You notice one more odd thing about him as you try to fish some words out of your swampy mind to label him in your memory. 

The blindfold, you notice, is not entirely opaque, but sheer, functioning the way sunglasses might. He notices you looking at his eyes, and immediately looks away again, visibly nervous. His fingers drum across his bent knees as he sits next to you in a fine little wooden chair.

“Jake,” you say with absolutely no prelude. “English. My name, I mean. I’m Jake.” 

His chin tilts back towards you and he meets your eyes again, if only for a second. 

“Dirk Strider.” He says after a thoughtful pause, then rises to walk to the door. His back and shoulders are broad and muscled with a thin waist, naturally lithe and long of limb. A very alluring build. He turns in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and stills. “I’ll uh. I’ll run you a bath.” With that, he disappears into the rest of what is probably an entire house, but leaves the door cracked behind him. 

You let your spine relax, and look towards the ceiling, unseeing. Every single muscle from your flippin’ brain to your ankles  _ aches _ . Time itself is measured in escalating dols. 

The pain is exhausting in and of itself, spiking incessantly with every slight pull or shift. Though hot water does sound like a grand idea, the thought of getting to the tub is as excruciating as the blasted pain. You fill your lungs on a sigh, and brace yourself against the gnawing soreness that tugs at your diaphragm as you inhale. You can hear Dirk through the door as he prepares a bath. Your bath. In a proper strangers house. After your near death experience in a strange wood. That lounging fear from earlier startles awake like a cat with a boot on its tail.

You could still buy the farm here, and Dirk very well could be the one to seal the proverbial deal.

But you haven't yet. Rather, he hasn't. 

The absurdity of your situation is staggering, not to mention how completely at Dirk’s mercy you've found yourself. He has been nothing but kind, though... you’re not sure why. Some people, you guess, are just naturally predisposed to kindness! Your grandmother was like that, and Jade. Your family is kind, and so by-gum, are you. Dirk may be a stranger, but he has done nothing to warrant your doubt, and much to earn your faith. He’s your boon in this fiendish forest, and you can only hope he stays that way.

You close your eyes against the stir of worry and queasiness in your throat, and swallow it down into you gut. Closing yours eyes helps to sooth the constant sway of illness, so you settle your features and drop your lids, keeping still. You doze again, waffling on the edge of sleep and awareness until you start to slip into deeper waters. 

Decades may as well pass.

“Jake.” 

You startle slightly at the sound of your name. It's still such a novel sound, your name from another pair of lips after months without. You couldn't have been sleeping longer than a few minutes. In the doorway, Dirk waits for your response, his sheltered eyes presumably trained on you. 

“Aye, yes, I’m here, kit.” You blink against the dizziness, and rub at your eyes. Goodness you are a mucky one. 

“Yeah, you sure are. The bath is ready,” he says as he walks over to stand at your side. There’s a citrus scent that chases his steps, flowing and clouding around you where he stops. It drifts for only a moment, and is gone. You miss it, though you couldn’t place it for the life of you. Citrus, clove, honey maybe? Too many foreign scents that overpower your feeble beak. 

Wondrously, it doesn’t make you nauseous, not the way thoughts of sunlight or food might. Instead, you find it soothes the burn of your lungs and chest, allowing you a soft sigh. What  would even more of it be capable of placating?

“Come on.” He says, and leans in to offer his hands. Together, the two of you get you upright in bed. That soothing smell is all around him, making you clutch to his arms desperately as you will yourself upwards. Like you thought, you’re bare from the waist up. Thankfully, however, these are definitely your original pants, unaltered. Now comes the really tricky part.

“Don’t suppose you can bring the tub in here, eh, pet?” He humors you with a little snort, and lifts you with an arm slung across your back. He takes your weight near effortlessly when you stand. A fast, vicious wave of nausea ripples through your stomach straight to your brain, pounding painfully between your ears and your knees begin to buckle.

“Easy..” He says, keeping you standing while you gasp and weeze, one hand pressed roughly against your eyes and forehead as you grit through the worst of it. After a rough minute or two, the waves subside, and you sigh shakily. 

“Alright,” you say, voice trembling. “Now or never, old chap.”

“You talk so fucking weird.” He says, amused, but tight lipped, so you let it slide this one time.

“Mm,” you grunt. “So’m told.” 

The two of you work hard to finagle your semi-prone frame into his little bathroom. The tub is unlike anything you've seen. Sitting in the middle of the small room is a large copper bathtub, shiney orange and well kept. A wooden base has been carved to hold the copper basin aloft, up off the floor, and allows for a wide ledge all around the lip for soaps and bottles and, at present, a few candles. The sink is of a similar build, wood and copper, and holds a glass pitcher with towels draped all around the edges of the sink. Steam rises thick and inviting form the tub, and that soothing citrus fills your lungs in delicious plumes. 

Dirk stops and goes rigid for a moment. You think you understand his dilemma. Nudity has never been an issue for you, but you understand that most of humanity does not share your views on the perks of running around in your birthday suit.

“Dirk, if it pleases you, feel free to turn tail. I don't rightfully care if you sneak a peek, but I think I can manage disrobing with just one of your hands to keep steady, yes?”

He swallows thickly and lets out a small huff of a laugh. “Did you just invite me to 'sneak a peek’ while you're in the bath?” He seems nonplussed, but his tone is dreadfully tight. He looks away when you shakely pop the button on your trousers, thankful he removed your belt. It's fairly likely you would not have been able to remove it presently without his fingers to assist you. 

“Under more favorable circumstances, I would invite you to do more than that,” you half wheeze, trying to sound confident, but your voice is strained and tired. You give him a sleepy wink, and watch the tips of his ears go pink. 

Interesting. Sick as a beaten wet dog and you've still got it.

Gripping his shoulder as tight as you can with one arm, you attempt to shimmy your pants and underwear down your legs. Dirk catches you when you wobble dangerously to one side, holding you upright while you step out of the legs one at a time and helping you step into the hot water the same way.

He guides you to sink down, and you oblige him all too willingly. The water comes up to your neck, and only your head and knees break the bubbly surface. The tub is effectively deep. 

You let your neck collapse, head falling back against the curved lip of the tub and tilt your face to look up into Dirk's eyes, sighing. The poor man is red as a ripe tomato and looking anywhere but down. You grin sleepily, despite any social graces you may have possessed before you became egregiously warm and naked and sick.

“I'm gonna see if I can’t find you some clothes...” He says, scratching at the back of his slender neck, awkward and just a little too sweet. In an instant, his body stiffens and his chin tilts back down to your face, a stern look seizing his features. You hold your breath, feeling his mood suddenly shift all around you. He is very serious when he says, “Don't fall asleep in the tub.” 

With that chilling warning, he turns and walks out, leaving the door cracked open behind him for the second time since you woke up. He means to keep an eye on you. That fact is as equally a comfort as it is a bit perturbing. It takes a moment to unknot your shoulders where they had painfully drawn up above the water, an instinctual reaction to Dirk’s striking anxiety. You force a sigh, and settle back into the milky depths. 

Focusing on your situation proves... difficult. Besides, there is very little you can do, presently. Not with this bruising sickness permeating your person and keeping you drained like a useless deflated balloon.

You close your eyes behind foggy lenses.

Thoughts sway back and forth with no proper cessation, all half words and meandering discontinuances. You float, both internally and externally, breathing in the sweet citrus and pine needle, letting it fill you and push the illness back. Heat layers on heat as the near scalding water works to break your dictorian fever. Staying awake is, admittedly, becoming quite tricky. Dirk’s stern warning was well founded, indeed. 

You force yourself to change position, to stir, folding your arms atop the wide lip, and planting your chin there. Settling in, you let your body relax back into a woozy puddle.

Time passes, drifting away with the steam.

You breath in dewy, humid sweetness and exhale your thoughts and pains. 

“Enjoying the water?” Dirk’s voice is quiet and slightly amused form the door. You’d like to look at him, but your eyelids seem to be down for the count. His voice is deep and warm like the bowl that holds you.

“Mother mercy, Strider, I’m damn enthusiastic for it.” You don’t bother lifting your head to talk, so your voice breathes sleepy and muffled against your damp arm. 

You hear the soft pad of Dirk's bare feet as he enters. Instead of approaching you, his footsteps tell you he is staying well and truly away, somewhere near the far wall straight ahead. .

“How did you heat this up so lickity splitly with no hot and cold?” You ask. The lack of turnable knobs was one of the first things you noticed about this aesthetically pleasing space.

“You were out for almost an hour, but sure, lickity splitly.” He says. You could almost swear you hear humor in it. “The copper in that basin is charmed to heat the water and keep it at a steady temperature until emptied.”

Your blink your eyes open. Charmed? 

Dirk is exactly where you imagined he would be, sitting cross legged, his body leaning serenely against the cabinet front at his back. He watches you, blindfolded, fingers knotted together in the bowl of his bent legs. 

“Pardon, but did you say charmed just then?” You ask, trying to focus on his face. 

It's hard, what with the way he's leaning the back of his skull against the wooden door, head tilted slightly up and exposing the long column of his freckled neck. There's so much to look at. The low collar on his loose sweater bares the peaks of his sharp collarbones. There is a black cord around his neck that dips below the seemingly soft material across his chest. You lick your lips.

He's beautiful, your mysterious host.

“I did.” He says, bringing you back into the moment.

“As in… Magic?” You say.

His lips pull up slightly on one side, a charming look for him. 

“As in magic.”

Yes, you thought that's what he said. You do some more vigorous blinking, all the while gaping like a trout gone topside.

Dirks little smile makes itself at home. “Don't hurt yourself,” he says. 

“Heavens to murgatroyd, I don't think I'm in my right mind at all, Strider.” You lean up, feeling a little indignant about being teased, and run both hands through your hair, dropping your arms back into the water with a splash.

“Did I actually kick the bucket? Is this some sort of cockameme fever dream? Magic??” You ramble, too tired and woozy to manage any kind of discretion.

Dirk watches, ever the picture of patience.

“Magic.” He responds simply, accompanied by a shallow nod. “And no, you’re not dead yet.” 

You cough out a manic little laugh, crossing your legs to give yourself space for leaning back against the tub edge, facing Dirk. You mirror his position, albeit with a touch more moisture. “Yet he says,” you sigh, letting your shoulders slump deeper into the misty water. 

“Yet I say. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re in the clear from just a long nap and a bath.” He warns. “That fever is how the forest planned to off you, and it doesn’t take too kindly to being cheated out of a mark.”

“That's bloody terrifying.” 

“That's life. Or I guess, death, in your case. Don't worry, I'll try not to let you die.” 

“Oh, lovely.” 

With that, he goes quiet, dozing in the humid air. He probably doesn't trust you not to snooze and stupidly drown yourself like some turkey in the rain. You wash the best you can, dishing out all your reserved energy to rid yourself of all that noxious feverstink. All the scrubbing eventually has you feeling exhausted again, so you alert Dirk to your current status, which is dreadfully tuckered out, and he rises like smoke from a snuffed flame.

He lifts you out of the water same as he put you there, and the two of you wrangle your naked body into some very soft linen pants with a drawstring waist. They're far too long, and admittedly, a tad tight in the rear, but they'll do for now. Dirk helps you dry your hair as well, dropping a towel over your head and rubbing vigorously until your giggling and pushing him away. Though his expression remains tepidly amused, his gaze feels warm, as if the poor sod just isn’t accustomed to using the muscles of his face.

It's strange, how easily you've come to accept Dirk. Accept his help, and care. His admittedly surly attitude and worm, quiet language. It's as if you've known him longer than a few sickly hours.

Like he's an old friend you're relearning after years apart.

It's strange, yes, but so is everything about your current situation. There is magic here, something you've known since day one, but only just have a name for. Dirk has solidified it in your mind, made it plausibel. Believable.

He is your keystone, keeping you tethered as that threatening sickness begins to twitch and simmer under your skin, ready for round three. 

Dirk tells you that you would be wasting your time and his resources by putting on a shirt. That you would no doubt simply sweat through it, just one more thing in need of being washed. You grin at him, cracking a joke about it being just dandy with you if he wants to ogle you some more. He rolls his eyes, ears pink, and drops you onto the bed like a sack of potatoes.

Being carried, even if just by a looped arm over a neck, is novel. You miss the physical contact immediately.

The sheets smell clean and inviting, and you can't help but rub your face against the soft cottony freshness. He must have swapped them out while you bathed. They smell like flowers and milk soap, sun dried and butter soft. He is very hospitative, your mysterious benefactor.

When you're back beneath the covers, Dirk brings you a glass of cold water and a pitcher for refills. He places them on your bedside table, next to three fat candles of varying heights. The creamy white wax has overtaken their inadequate living space, dripping down onto the dark table top unimpeded, brilliant white stalactites of white. Round droplets mark the floor below, as if Dirk just doesn't bother with their upkeep. He bends beside you to light the tallest of them, elegant profile on full display. He makes the rounds, burning bout five other candles around the room, then settles back into his cozy bedside chair. The little cabin is fairly comfortable, soft, unobtrusive lights dancing all around the two of you.

As you settle down into the soft bed, you can feel the pain starting to trickle back into your nerves with each even pulse of your heart. You look to Dirk, worry seeping into your expression. You think to hide it too late. You're so very tired, and barefaced all the more for it.

Dirk knows, his expression soft but contained.

“Sleep,” he beckons, voice deep and warm as it rumbles around you. “If you sleep now, before the fever pitches, there's a good chance you'll have fewer nightmares.” 

“Um..” You nod, kneading the sheets between your fingers, unsettling them atop your chest as you prepare yourself to say some very childish, very embarrassing words. “Are you going to- going to stay here? With me?” 

Dirks eyebrows climb up slowly as he turns his eyes to you. A tiny smile curls the edges of his mouth. You sigh.

“Yeah, man. I'll be right here.”

The bone deep warmth that fused into your frame from the bath helps settle you down, readies you for the aches to come, while Dirk's soft smile and warm words send you drifting into Dreamland as if on a light breeze.

You'd very much like to dream of him.

You do not.

The sickness spares you no quarter. Time means nothing. You’re submerged in waves of fire, the fever wringing out every ounce of clean strength Dirk had gifted you that very evening. Though you do catch a good handful of restful moments before the malady bites into you, the meager break does little to dampen the petrifying horrors your illness conjures.   


Then, fast and clean as the crack of a whip, you’re elsewhere, eyes fluttering open.

You are still dreaming. You know you are dreaming, because it is your dream. The world stretches around you. Snow. You are knee deep in snow. It has all the tell tale signs of snow. Cold, shimmery, smooth and fluffy all at once. Your brain tells you, “yes, this is snow.”

It is black. 

Inky and glittering below a milky yellow moon. The yawning sky above you is a swirling mix of rich, saturated purples and dark indigos, splattered with stars. You take a moment to study them.

You fail to draw constellations. 

These stars are simply not the stars you know. Pinned beneath an unknown galaxy, your mind teeters on the edge of unnerve and understanding. You decide to stop looking at the stars.

You take a step. It makes no sound. The snow does not crunch, it simply gives, yet you still find yourself with high lifted knees and raised arms, trying for balancing. From where you are, there is nothing. No landmarks. No Flora. No life. The sky meets the frigid dunes all around you, seamlessly. A frozen desert, one you are both familiar with and contently unaware. It’s a desert, but it is not. You walk on beneath the foreign, shifting stars.

After some indeterminable amount of time, you realize you are not fatigued. It is a dream, and as such, maybe those sort of natural laws are forfeit, forgotten. 

You know, because this is your dream, that this is simply not the case. 

You stumble over your own feet, reaching out on instinct to catch yourself, down in the icy pitch. The color does not stick to your hands or clothes, but falls away like proper snow. This is perplexing, if only because the color of your fingers says otherwise.

Your fingers, inches from your face as you sit comfortably hip deep in the strange powder, are not your fingers. That is to say, they very much are your fingers, but they are  _ wrong _ . Blue. Starting at the base of each finger, they are greyed, fading to the deathly blackish blue of frostbite at every tip.

You do not feel it. You flex your fingers, but you do not feel it. You draw in a deep breath, calmly examining your spread digits. It is deja vu. Vague, a comfortable misremembering of something completely unknown. You are not surprised by the death you find in your palms. You do not feel ill at ease. 

You do not feel anything.

You look up, bored maybe, or perhaps it is just time for this narrative to mosey onward. This dream is not chaotic or oppressive, and in that way, very unlike its predecessors. You welcome it’s calm. About a yard away from your folded knees is a large saguaro cactus. You turn your gaze about sleepily, surveying the land around you.

Nope. It’s the only one for, what seems very likely to be miles and miles of duney snow. You approach it, if only because there seems to be nothing else to occupy you. 

It, like everything in this land, is not the natural verdant hues of a saguaro cactus. This giant, erect figure is an almost blinding white, soft blue lines running up the inside of it’s exterior in variously thick stripes. The needles, about three inches long and sharp as all get out, are glass. Maybe ice. But clear and fearsome all the same. However, you do not fear them.

You do not fear anything.

You prick your finger. The glass spine breaks in half without a sound. You pull the needle from your deathly blue skin. It’s deeper than you meant for it to sink.

You do not feel it.

The blood coagulates almost instantly, forming a perfect black bead at the peak of your finger. You marvel at the tiny sphere. It should perhaps disturb you, but it does not. It makes sense that you do not bleed out. You simply lack the pulse it takes to make the faucet drip. The pearl is dark, a rusted deep brown. Dead, you suppose. You do not feel alarm.

You do not feel anything.

You return to examining the cactus.

There is now a bright, golden bloom on one tall stalk, just out of reach. The flower is very much not a desert flower. The petals are goldenrod yellow, dipped in fiery oranges that sway and curl along the soft edges of each plush petal. A peony. Suddenly, you want it, can't live without it, in fact. The ferocity of that want slams into your brain, biting and scratching at your sombre mood like an enraged cat.

You need it.

You are a man possessed. You throw up a hand for the bloom, needles breaking against the skin of your hand, arm, and chest. You do not feel it. 

You are blinded by desperation. Nothing matters. Nothing but that glorious, soft sun at your fingertips.

You pull it from on high, drawing it down to your chest like a fragile thing. It is warm.

So warm.

You feel it.

The petals are velvet soft against the cold skin of your palm, so livid and lucious against the hard contrast of your dead flesh. It smells like citrus. Like life. Like being alive, like living. Like loving. You tilt the bloom up, and drink the nectar from it’s endless, shallow depths.

You feel everything.

_ It hurts. Everything  _ **_hurts_ ** _. _

You keep drinking as pain spirals up your stomach, seizing every muscle and forcing tears from your eyes. Like burning alive. Like being shocked by lightning. Like drowning. All in time with one another. Your spine curls over, forcing you down to your knees. You keep drinking. Snow starts to fall, heavy and dark like ashes from the cloudless sky. You hear a scream. You keep drinking. The pain is immense.

You hear a scream. A woman screaming. You keep drinking.

The snow piles around you, over you. Encases you. You hear the screams, but you can't stop.

 

**JAKE.**

 

Your ears crackle and pop as the scene changes again. You jerk upright, disturbing the covers that had been pulled cozily up around your shoulders. You're panting and sweating like you've just returned from running a marathon while under the sweltering effects of the world's worst case of measles. You’re back in Dirk’s little house, candles still flickering quietly around you. Dirk is missing. Your breathing is very loud. The taste of the nectar lingers on your lips, and you raise a hand to your mouth on instinct. Thank heavens your fingers are the warm shade of life again, though about as clammy as wet bread.

Again? Were they not before?

What were you just doing?

A woman’s scream jackknifes through the air around you.  _ Where’s Dirk? _

You nearly fall out of the bed, catching yourself on the tree breaking ground before you. Dizziness turns the world into a savage kaleidoscope of sweeping browns and golds. Sweat beads across your shoulders and arms, drips down your jaw. The fever chokes the air from your lungs in a scalding clutch. The screaming continues, but cuts off abruptly.

It’s coming from the woods.

_ Where the mighty fuck is Dirk? _

You stumble forward as the waves of dizziness draw back, heaving breaths in time with your crooked steps towards the front door. Your shoulders and arms steam when they hit the cool air outside, gulping down breath after breath of it. You brace yourself, both hands pressed hard against the doorframe to hold your body upright. You have to find him, find the sounds. Fire curls around the tight confines of your body, forcing you into ragged panting to make room for it’s bellowing heat. The cold air does nothing but ravage your throat. 

You push off the frame, and walk into the dark woods, practically blind.

There are no stars. No moon. The clouds have gobbled up every speck of light across the sky, their greed leaving you to stumble blindly through the darkness. You are surrounded by pitch, a humming blackness that bids you no friendly welcome.Twigs break, you crash into trunks of trees and shrubs that tear at your skin and pants. You trip and stumble. You have to keep moving. You can practically feel the steam pouring out of your ragged throat. Every muscle screams for you to stop.

You don’t. _ You're on fire. _

You pray to any gods that might exist in this ancient place. You pray that your mind does  not leave you, that reality is just that.

Real. 

Here, where dreams collide with your waking hours. 

You hear a raspy breath, soft and barely comprehensible over the harsh sounds of your own breathing, the pounding of your blood beneath your ears and throat. You hold your breath, afraid your manic brain is making up ghouls to populate the vibrating darkness that surrounds you. 

Please, you silently plead. Please.

You hear it. Another shallow, wet gasp.

Your breath escapes you like a dam breaking and you fall forward, collapsing onto your knees through a break in the treeline. A clearing.

The clouds split above you, moonlight skating across the open ground like sickened lamplight. 

A glint out in the grass catches your eye. You squint, trying to focus, when the thick, coppery smell of blood rushes you on a swift breeze, turning your already nauseous stomach into writhing knots. You vomit, heaving bile onto the grass between your shoulders. 

Tears track along your cheeks as the hyper clarity of post-vomiting allows you to make some sense of the world that reaches out from beneath your damp hands and knees. You’re still on fire, panting and sweating against the night’s chill. You lift your heavy skull, blinking through your tears.

A fox lays stricken in the middle of the small clearing. It’s chest barely rises, wheezing through breath after painful wet breath. It’s torn up, white bone exposed along it’s ribs and flank. You gag, and stumble away from your own mess to avoid any more happy returns.

You lift up, knees almost knocking together with the ferocity of the tremors rattling through your body. You wet your lips and spit, wiping away the excess drool and bile with the back of your hand. You approach the fox on trembling legs. 

She will die. 

Not soon enough, perhaps, but she will succumb to these wounds. You have hunted in these woods and many others across the vast expanse. You've witnessed other humans who set cruel traps to ensnare or impale their unseeing prey. To you, they seemed crass and barbaric. You hated them.

You fall to her side. She does not notice you past the veil of her own pain.

This will not be the first time you have taken a life out of mercy. 

You look around the clearing, hoping for something to help quicken the deed. You're not sure you have the strength or accuracy to break her neck, and could end up only putting the miserable creature through more duress. You find a heavy rock a few short paces away and make a decision.

The hit is swift, the stone sharp. You aim to crush and sever in one instant. You put her to rest with a singular strike to the base of her skull.

There is hot spray along your chest and cheek. At present, you could not give less of a friggin fuck. You toss the stone aside, and sit, hunched over the tiny, cooling body. You feel wrung out and hollow, puffing damp clouds into the chill night air. 

A sound, sharp and quick, breaks the numbing silence and nearly sends you reeling backwards. The quiet is broken.

A bestial growl, low and guttural, crawls through the small clearing, vibrating the ground around you like a roll of thunder.

Fear has you lifting your eyes slowly, feeling pinned under the gaze of a higher power than yourself, breath withheld in a panicked attempt to stay unnoticed. You catch the glow, sallow moonlight refracting off two ghostly yellow orbs opposite you in the clearing. Golden, luminous. They are *big,* and you are not. You are soft, and very, very small. 

You are noticed.

Your heart beats chaotic against your thin sternum of human bones. Your breaths are quick and shallow, afraid to create too much sound and activate some primelevil prey drive in your ghastly acquaintance. You swallow, clench your hands at your sides as a new kind of adrenaline ratchets through your bloodstream.

When the gleam of moisture along it's great nose breaks the trees, you pivot on your heel

and run for your life.

It gives chase immediately, easily crushing every log or bramble you desperately dodge to keep distance between you and those massive jaws. It moans, desperate and rapacious as the sound rattles through you. At times, you feel the heat of it's breath waft around your midsection, and the burn of your lungs doubles over as you pump your legs for all they're worth. 

You don't feel your feet anymore. Your shins.

All you know is escape. 

Survival.

The creature whines, high pitched and primal and the sound alone is  _ gigantic _ . You dare not look back as you breach the trees and sprint to Dirk's door.

Unlocked, you throw it open, curling yourself in and around the door, forcing it shut with the weight of your collapsing body. You sink to the floor, chest heaving, panting and sobbing. The floor has bloody tracks that are undoubtedly from your own savaged feet and legs. You look down, tears falling from your chin. Sweat covers your entire body, leaving you glistening in low candlelight. Your thin cotton pants are shredded and bloodied. You can't lift your head up.

You can barely breath. 

The fever is torrid, liquid heat filling you where your adrenaline slowly drips out.

You hear them before they enter your line of sight. The gentle sound of bare feet. You press yourself to the door on instinct, still caught in the aftershocks of terror, cringing as you crane your neck to look up. 

Dirk.

Dirk is here. 

Your head knocks gently against the door at your back as you crane to gape up at him.

Your heart stops dead in your chest.

Like you, he is sporting a new color across his ethereal features. 

Blood covers his lips and chin, drips in perfect lines down the long parallels of his pale throat. He's shirtless, letting the blood run it's coarse down his flesh in neat red lanes that stop mid pectoral. His hands are gloved in wet carmine, feet bare and caked in earth. 

He approaches you, kneels between your legs, sprawled out and useless. Your breathing starts to even out, body twitching in the aftershocks of terror. The fever keeps you panting regardless of your waning pulse. The heat is untouchable. 

“Dirk,” you plead, over and over until your voice leaks out broken and hoarse. “ _ Dirk _ .”

Where was he? Why is he covered in blood? Where did that blood come from? Is this real?

_ Are you real? _

You do not voice your manic thoughts, unable to craft words beyond that one, easy syllable that clings heavy and sweet to the tip of your tongue.

“Dirk…”

His hands rise to cup your face, cool and wet. He runs his thumbs across your cheeks, gently palms your jaw as you breathe open mouthed and desperately wanting something you can't wrap your mind around. Needing it.

Your hands clutch weakly at his wrists. 

Dirk leans in, hot breath ghosting across your open mouth. Your eyes squeeze shut, fingers digging into the soft skin of his wrist. He shushes you, soft whispering condolences that slip into your mind, feather light. One hand slides behind your ear, pets your tacky hair down. You keen against it, lost in his softness. His care.

“Jake.” He commands you. Dirk's molten eyes are right there when you pry your wet, sticky eyelashes apart. You sob, a broken, wounded sound that only brings you closer to him.

Dirk mercifully closes the distance between you. His lips slip against yours, warm and slick with blood you can’t hope to identify, can’t taste. The kiss is soft, and he allows you to breath between tender presses. A thick derangement settles over your mind, delicious madness that drives back your reason, numbs your fear. 

Once your sobbing has leveled out into deeper, condensed lungfuls, Dirk presses further, gliding his slick tongue across your bottom lip, entreating. Something deep in your chest stirs, reaching out to him.

You taste wine as you open for him, letting his tongue slide against yours. He presses the pungent, heady flavor into your mouth, curling his tongue around yours like a godsend. You breath in sharply through your nose as you press against him tighter. Dirk leans back and drags you to him, straddling his lap. Something ancient and brittle in its wanting.

He pulls you closer.

He pulls you under. 

You ripple beneath his touch.

Your entire body reacts to him like a drop in a still pond, smooth concentric circles of heat, fanning out as he drowns you with his wet kisses, one warm press chasing the next.

A moistened hand slides down your neck, your shoulder. You're shivering, gasping into his open mouth as he swallows your calm, replacing it with his cottony warm presence.

A hand drags down your spine, his arm curling around your waist to pull you flush against him. The cool press of his chest against yours. Every motion is slow, tremulous. His tongue is solid, rhythm mesmerizing, lips soft. The fever swoons, bending for him, lowering to that budding crucible between your hips. 

He sucks at your swollen lips and you whimper for him. He kisses the corner of your mouth sweetly, and you let your body relax, mould to his shape. 

Great friggin blazes you're hard. Your arousal hangs heavy like a weight tied around the dewy cloud he has you suspended in, keeping you tethered to the physical. Dirk's hands fall to your waist. He applies the right amount of pressure, guides your hips to roll against his, and drinks down your lush moan with a deep kiss.

Somehow he knows.

He knows, and he'll take care of you. 

He always has.

Hasn't he? 

You wrap your arms around his neck, chest to chest. His hands slide up around your rib cage, tracing the lines of each thin bone as if you are something delicate. Something cherished.

He licks down your throat with a tongue like sandpaper, longer than it has any right to be as it wraps tight along your Adam's apple. He growls, a deep, rolling sound that registers to you as, in some way, familiar. 

Deja vu.

Or a memory. Recent. 

You should know this.  _ You know that sound _ . The coals are too damp, sparks don’t catch.

You choose to ignore it in favor of better things.

In favor of Dirk’s hands. His mouth. The sharp teeth at your throat, the grip of his fingers, the climax blooming at the base of your spine. 

He kisses you as you come. That wine taste sweeps across your tongue and you swallow it down again and again as you gasp through the lightning racing through you, aching for anything he’ll give you.

For him.

He takes care of you.

He always has.

Your forehead drops to his shoulder, lungs heaving. You squeeze your eyes shut against the the dizzying withdraws of orgasm, Dirk’s hands skating across your back and hips.

“Sleep, I’ve got you,” he says, in a voice like honeyed milk. Like warm nights and mornings that linger.

Like he loves you.

You roll your face against his skin, holding on tight as you can as Dirk stands, lifting your body off the ground without any fuss at all. 

Sleep. Yes.

You can do that. 

For him, you can do anything, no problemo.


End file.
